"That your head tells you one thing, your heart tells you another, and your pussy tells you another, these are things that we have to admit, and that's the way it is. And that also leads us to situations that we would rather not assume." With such clear and representative phrases about how women function in the face of sexuality and our own desire, the film director Isabel Coixet surprised us during a recent interview on Cadena SER.

He went on to refer to the price that always accompanies female desire, attributing to it an increase of up to three times the cost of male desire; if not more, I might add. This is a problem, of course. Not only because of the association of personal incoherence and the consequent discomfort unleashed, but also because of the risks it entails for the woman, whether she wants it or not. Also, because of the asynchrony that is evident in relationships between people of different genders, a recurring issue in couples therapy sessions, but also in sporadic or incipient relationships.

According to David Pareja, the popular actor who, in relation to Coixet's comments, replied that he did not know the reason for that difference in terms of the aggravated price in the female case; She pointed out that this would also be associated with the probability of suffering sexist and sexual violence, such as, for example, when "a woman meets a man one night and they go home. What that man can do to that woman can be very fucked up, even very serious. Something that is very difficult for a man to happen to us, very, very difficult."

Although we do not want to see or accept it, for a wide variety of reasons, including misinformation and privilege, the reality is that we are educated very differently depending on our gender, attributed at birth according to our sex and genitals.

Sex for love or love for sex. Women are taught to love, through care, above all, and for love and sex to happen together. Leaving that association generates cognitive, emotional, and sexual dissonance, which translates into fear, guilt, and even disgust and other feelings of discomfort in various central areas of life.

But we also like to fuck without expecting any kind of affection, except mutual respect, of course. But the latter usually comes at a price. It already seems a cliché to comment that when a man is fiery and has a lot of sexual relations with other people, it is usually normalized and even encouraged or applauded. It gives you a social cachet and even greater appeal, in several ways. A winner, wow.

However, in the case of women who share that frequency in terms of their sexual activity and their expression of desire, they are not only considered emotionally cold, promiscuous, or fall under the stigma of 'freca', but they are also undervalued as future partners, wives or mothers.

Of course, those who are sexual, desirous and with an active seduction format are less respected, and not passive, as would correspond to their female gender role. This, obviously, should not be judged or 'paid for' in this way, since it is the result of a social construction designed by men, heterosexuals and whites to suit them and maintained by the educators par excellence, those who need the recognition of good women, or simply have no other choice. What's more, it should be changed, mainly by the creators of this inequality that we all maintain.

What do your head, your heart, and your pussy tell you? What others say, we know, but your head, possibly, when you think about your desire, will bombard you with endless questions about good, evil, and should. The neocortex checking that you don't escape from the box and follow the rules.

It's a ticking time bomb. All that cultural, biological, psychological, and social baggage struggling to remain educated and thus be accepted in the face of those fantasies and thoughts of pleasure and sexual liberation, which the infiltrated visceral brain desires and relays as your genitals are congested, throbbed and lubricated.

And, on the other hand, emotions doing their thing so that you vibrate and feel, but also that you fear and get indignant when you understand that you will have to take risks for doing what is expected in the other gender; But not in you, woman. Cross your legs.

Are you the whore, the witch or the spinster? Or on the contrary, the good wife, the mother, the virgin or the maiden? A dilemma worthy of 'The Matrix', where the 'red pill' involves choosing uncertainty, the will to change and encountering the truth of the system that roars against you. But with the possibility of being able to be and not having to appear.

Or choose the 'blue pill', remaining in ignorance, seemingly satisfying. If at least this pill worked and made us forget our desiring nature, we would gladly accept that women 'are like that', and it is normal that we have no desire, that we have a hard time reaching orgasm or that we are more of love than passion. When this is absolutely false.

But that 'blue pill', in real life, usually stays spinning. Ruminating without spitting or swallowing the tangle of social expectations and frustrated desires that weigh on both women and their sexual partners.

In the name of the heart, not only romantic love is spoken, but also self-love. Contemplating the infinite emotions that populate our being, more or less pleasant. We've located it in this vital organ, blood pump and little brain in the heart connected to the limbic system. There, in our mammalian brain, in charge of creating and receiving the pumps that transmit our feelings, those emotions are shaped and blocked, quite a few times, by reason.

According to the Taoist idea of the emperor or Wang, there must be coherence between Heaven/Thought, Person/Feeling, and Earth/Action. But what an arduous task it is to communicate. "Head, heart and eggs", as Alcaraz would say, but with very different connotations.

Ana Sierra is a psychologist and sexologist.

  • Carlos Alcaraz